Northumberland Mammals

There is little in Tyneside to attract a naturalist in search of mammals however much it may appeal to students of the Industrial North. The “denes”, steep thickly-wooded clefts enclosing the streams, right up to the outskirts of Newcastle itself, still harbour a few red squirrels: the grey is absent. It has crossed the Wear into County Durham from liberation areas in Yorkshire but so far it has failed to cross the Tyne. Tyneside with its busy shipyards and its grimy ring of coalmines is, however, only one small corner of Northumberland. It is true that opencast operations have extended the black area: they certainly make a sorry mess of the countryside. But away beyond all this in a vast sector between north and west stretches the real Northumberland, the fifth largest county in England, a land of hills and moors, woods and farms, still much as it was before the industrial ravaging of Tyneside.